X-Men: Dark Phoenix Trailer Screened At Fox Presentation In Russia

While the studio has yet to begin marketing proper for X-Men: Dark Phoenix, 20th Century Fox finally screened a trailer for the film at a recent product presentation in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

The next installment in the X-Men prequel film series that began with X-Men: First Class in 2011, Dark Phoenix was once scheduled to hit theaters at the beginning of November. However, Fox pushed its release date back to February 2019 after it became clear the movie's cast wouldn't be available for reshoots until late August - something that would've made completing the film's heavy VFX impossible, had it stuck to its original Fall launch date. Thus, the studio's entire marketing campaign for the movie would up being similarly delayed.

With Dark Phoenix's reshoots now essentially done (they were only scheduled to last two and a half weeks), Fox is starting to rev up its marketing machine for the film. While Fox has yet to announce when it will be released to the general public, a Dark Phoenix trailer has been assembled and even shown to select members of the press in Russia, like The Flick!'s Nikita Byrkin (see the tweets below).

Dark Phoenix marks the directorial debut for longtime X-Men film writer/producer Simon Kinberg and brings back the main cast from 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse - including, Sophie Turner as the young Jean Grey. The movie will give Kinberg a second shot at adapting the famous Dark Phoenix Saga - the 1980 comic book story where Jean fully taps into her mutant abilities and becomes the extremely powerful (and dangerous) Phoenix - after his work on the script for X-Men: The Last Stand. That movie infamously reduced the Phoenix Saga to a subplot, after Kinberg was forced to include a story thread involving the invention of a "cure" for the mutant gene (as inspired by a similar arc from Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men comic book run titled "Gifted").

In light of the reshoots and release date delay (to mention nothing of Disney's ongoing acquisition of Fox), fans have understandably expressed concerns that Dark Phoenix is shaping up to be another underwhelming X-Men film on par with Apocalypse. That's all the more reason for the studio to want to get its official marketing for the film started on the right foot and "test" its trailer on members of the press whose reactions can be embargoed - before releasing a version to the public, that is.

Fortunately, there are some big Fox movies on the horizon that the Dark Phoenix trailer could be attached to - including, October's Bad Times at the El Royale and Bohemian Rhapsody (which arrives on Dark Phoenix's former release date). Thus, fans shouldn't have to wait too much longer before they get to see some actual Dark Phoenix footage and judge it for themselves.